Messages From Beyond: Geese, Fox Kits, Bees; My Grandma?

Two geese three times in ten days fly right by my bedroom window.

Two newborn fox kits on the path, revealing, somehow, the flickerings of the soul of the world.

Separating the mikes into two, cleaving then and now. 

And yesterday, hundreds of bees swarming just outside my bedroom window. It began as a couple of dozen, going in and out of an area between the wall and roof tile. Later I looked outside and there were hundreds at least and the buzzing was incredible. Not long after they quieted again to about two dozen concentrated up by the roof tile. Wanting to make a home in our home. Wow. 

I found this article about the symbolism of bees and of a swarm of bees. The hexagon shape of their hive cells is a mystical shape long associated with the heart, and the sweetness found within our own hearts. (I'm pretty sure Nora used that word, sweetness, when I was telling her about the dead fox kits.) It is a symbols of the sun and the sun's energies. The bee is about dreams longed for. They are a reminder to extract the honey of life and to make our lives fertile while the sun shines. The bee reminds us that no matter how great the dream, there is the promise of fulfillment if we pursue it. If we but pursue our dreams, and the elixir of life which is as sweet as honey and the opportunity to drink of it can be ours. They remind us to stay focused on our dreams and continually strive toward them, even when they seem difficult or daunting; to persist in our own endeavors, trusting in our abilities and pushing forward with relentless determination. 

A swarm of bees specifically is symbolized as a powerful message and guidance from the beyond, from the divine realm. A swarm of bees can carry the spiritual message of transformation. A swarm of bees symbolizes change and a new beginning. In some cultures, a swarm of bees represents the fruits of our labors. 

Some see a swarm of bees as a representation of an ancestral lineage (oh my! just the day before I had asked my grandma (Suoja) if she was there~) or a sacred connection to nature. 

At the core of all the interpretations is the belief that a swarm of bees holds a deep spiritual meaning. One of the most profound teachings is that the swarm of bees offers insight into our own innermost desires. 

This morning when the sun came up, there is a singular bee outside my window. Most likely having slept there all night and still there all the while I meditated. 

What if wonder and awe might simply, with no effort on my part, eclipse the now Mike? Wow. 

Flickerings with Jude Currivan

"If we have a perspective, we will behave according to that perspective. I.e., if we believe that everything is separate, that will be our "attractor." But we can co-create attractors of peace, attractors of love. And what happens in a system is that at a point of unsustainability, it starts to break down, the whole attracted boundaries start to fall away, to dissolve, to break down. And it can breakdown into chaos, but in consciousness, and this is part of biological emergence, but it's also integral to conscious evolution: another attractor begins to crystalize, to potentialize, strengthen, to be empowered, at a higher level of coherence, and for coherence, read love. So where we are now is we've got the breaking down of the old paradigm, the old tractor, the old perspective of the illusion of separation and duality, and what's forming here is a higher coherent attractor. And what happens, and this is true in biology, it's true in conscious evolution is what's called flickering. And I know this flickering really well, because some years ago I decided to give up chocolate biscuits. I'll tell you, that was so hard, so my old attractor was chocolate biscuits, chocolate biscuits and my new attractor was not so many, not so many. So I was flickering into that and then falling back into that. But that's essentially what we are doing, but on a much more serious level, we are flickering into this potentiality of the coherence of love, and you know you might have a bad day, or something comes on the news, and we come back down to the old paradigm. But the new is strengthening, the new, because its singing a better song than the old, it has more life than the old. The old is in a death spiral, and let's honor it, and let it fall away. And let's answer the call to the new coherence, the new attractor of evolution." 

Nora! This is also about tremulousness! Inherent in flickerings is tremulousness! 

The rest for context but not necessary to my point: 

"This is all part of an emergent universe. Because what this is all showing us is there is no duality, that reality is unified and diverse and differentiated. That literally, mind is matter, matter is mind, and consciousness isn't something we have, it's what we and the whole world are.  So the question to us is, with that understanding, with that emergent understanding, with the evidence, no longer to hope, or to have faith, or to whatever, but realize that the evidence is in and so now what? It's not what if, it's what now. And my sense is that it's time to come together, to hold hands, to answer that call in whatever way our hearts call to us, but to realize that the universe has got our back, that the multi-dimensional realities that are part of all of this impulse, as part of this big breath, the universe didn't begin with a big bang, it wasn't big, it wasn't a bang, it began 13.8 billion years ago with a most exquisite out breath of possibility. We are part of that out breath, we are microcosmic co-creators, cosmic beings, with a meaning and purpose at this moment on our beloved Gaia, and it's an amazing moment." 

Mystics Week 4 ~ Animus & Stillness & Stitches

The Second Mansion

...the wish is for
every flower of the heart to unfold.
  ~Cynthia Bourgeault

This week brings the unexpected.
As each week has.
This week brings Cynthia Bourgeault
Cynthia Bourgeault in conversation with Adyashanti
Centering prayer
Stillness
Ocean of light energy running through us
Deepening practice


Animus and Mike and Wholeness and Freedom
Winter skies
Anniversaries
Somatic memories
Stitching, lots and lots of creating and stitching

More confusion about the indescribable love of god and yet the suffering ~ though a tiny crack of light has gotten into this one. I think. 

 

The Mystics Week 3 - Part 2 ~OR~ The Life Force, The Diamond Soul

She was radically faithful to something she didn't see coming,
and she surrendered to it, and it just broke right open. 
~Jim Finely

Contemplation is the practice of being fully present
—in heart, mind, and body—
~Richard Rohr

In the middle of the season, in the middle of the session, I leave Merton behind and skip to season two of Turning to the Mystics where I find St. Teresa of Avila. 

From the Introduction Jim speaks about Teresa's words in The Interior Castle, The First Dwelling (or mansion):

I began to think of the soul as if it were a castle made of a single diamond or a very clear crystal, in which there are many rooms...

We are a mystery to ourself. We are a mystery to ourself because our finite comprehension and ego consciousness is infinitely less than the infinite mystery of the depths of our own soul. So we cannot gather up the immensity of god giving herself away in and as the majesty of our own soul. Our little mind can't grasp it but what we can't grasp we can realize if we surrender to it. We can intimately realize the intimate immediacy of what we can't comprehend. Which is spiritual understanding. 

! Big insight into something that has troubled me from the beginning. If we are nothing without god's presence, if at the count of three we would vanish if that love was withdrawn, then god is the life force. Yes! The Life Force. Now I get it. 

From Jim's reflection: 

Our soul has a quality that is elegant, it's vast, it's mysterious, it's graced, it's luminous, it's inherently holy or, I would say sacred. This is the mystery of our soul. Reflecting on this, then god, who is being poured out and given to us as the mystery of our own soul, then that one, the life force lives inside of us, in the innermost hidden center of us. (I'm thinking our hearts.) And god takes his delight in us, that we are the beloved of this life force.

When we love someone deeply, we see the soul of them, we see in our love for them, we see the preciousness of who they are, like the innermost depth of the gift and the miracle of their presence. And we also sense then that when we see the soul of a person which is the preciousness of the person then we see how grateful they are to be so deeply seen. They see that you see in them this indescribable preciousness and this gifts them. This is love being poured out. 

(What a pity that Jim is speaking here only of romantic love, partnered love, marriage)

The door to which we enter into this first mansion of the diamond soul is prayer and meditation. As far as I can understand, the door of entry into this castle is prayer and meditation. For what is prayer? Prayer is the sincerity of asking for such things. Prayer is being aware of who we are talking to. When the prayer ends, ask god not to break the grace not to break the thread of such sensitivity. This subtle shift in the paradoxical state of realizing god's infinite oneness with us; this reciprocal love that is sustaining us. If we did nothing more than this, be a faith first mansion person, that would be an amazing thing. 

! It is our souls that are made in god's image!! Our souls, not our physical bodies. God is not a man because he made Adam in his image of a man! Huge, huge seeing for me. Oh what the church, patriarchy, has done. 

At the same time I have started reading Mirabai Starr's translation of The Interior Castle. From the introduction: 

"The extraordinary thing about this castle where god lives is that it is inside of us. The journey to union with the Beloved is a journey home to the center of ourselves. I myself can come up with nothing as magnificent of the beauty and the amplitude of a soul. The human soul is so beautiful, so glorious, that the Beloved chooses it as his dwelling place." A little stumbling block on this last piece. 

But we rarely consider the soul's excellent qualities or who it is that dwells within her or how precious she really is. And so we don't bother to tend to her beauty. 

I love that Mirabai translates "through our own faults" to "what a shame that, through our unconsciousness, we do not know ourselves."

Random Notes:

Richard Rohr: An appreciator is a contemplative, in fact you become an all day appreciator of little things, of everything...

Note: Merciful and mercy are more words that don't work for me. These are based on the needing of compassion or forbearance because one is an "offender" or a subject to one's power. Lower. Bad. Less than. 

The Mystics Week 3 Part 1 ~ OR ~ Emptiness is Perfect

"Contemplative wisdom is present in the hidden
recesses of our own bodies, minds, and hearts,
waiting to be recognized."  
~Jim Finely

This week isn't going well as far as Mystics. Right away a hitch. Which I expected, but not even this intensely. 

In the middle of the reflection on Thomas Merton's words I've stopped the recording. So many strong emotions coming up. First, so much sadness at the thought that this is probably not my path after all. But also the seeing which I've known but keep overriding. My truth, that I cannot find You in religion. I cannot find You in the words, in the ideas, in the trappings of religion. This, this is the word that comes, trappings—it makes me think, ironically, of the Trappist monks, though named for a place not a state of being, La Grande Trappe, France. Still this being trapped is a place. A grand, trapped place. 

I cannot find you in the sexism, the misogyny, the dogma of religion, especially religion founded in patriarchy—weren't they all—upheld in patriarchy—ditto. I cannot find You there, cannot find You in those words, cannot find You in god the father, in lord, in master. No. No god the father. No. And that we are filled with him and we are nothing without that. We are nothing without that but not in the way that they think. because we ARE that. I tell the divine that I need not words but direct experience, not religion but spirit; spirit, spirituality; feeling, not thinking; being, not doing. I was hoping, Beloved, that You would be illuminated to me through this path because I don't know what other path there is. If not here, where? 

The answer comes to me in living daily life, in the streams, in the stream that I listen to when I meditate/pray, the beads, in how much I love my family, how much I love nature and the world. And what about all the suffering? Annie is suffering. Katie is suffering. Faye is suffering. Ukrainians are suffering. Palestinians. Jews. All around the world people are suffering. What god creates this? Though maybe... I mean those are human questions, they occupy the mind nonstop~and they are not unimportant questions. But what if, what if it's about letting go of trying to make sense of anything, maybe the questions stand in the way, maybe there will never be understanding, and also I think that the glimpses I got of You in nature, in the natural world, before I turned to the Christian mystics, which just felt so pure and so beautiful are as real as any transcendent experience. Maybe it's about feeling the suffering. Letting it break open the heart. You know this. I can feel that You know this. 

Then I opened the meditation app this morning and there was a snippet from Robert Frost that's been a favorite since I was a child ~ "

Two roads diverged in a wood,and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
 and that has made all the difference." 

And it feels like here I am again, and I don't know why that makes me so sad.  And empty. Like will I ever find my place? Will I ever find my way?Like it was here, filled with possibility, with potential meaning, with tiny inklings of something, and now it has left. I want to say that I'm confused but actually I'm not confused. I'm not confused. This is not my path. 

Later, getting ready for bed, full yellow moon hanging just outside my window I think that maybe emptiness is good. Maybe it's even perfect. Maybe it's just the right thing because you can't fill a bowl or a glass that's already full. This way there's a place that spirit can move into. Ah. But can we be empty while at the same time filled? 

The Mystics Week 2

 

"At the deepest level, it does not really matter where you
seek this path because it is everywhere."

~Jim Finely

Making a specific record of the reading and the reflection doesn't seem to have energy this week.

But this I can say:

What I am interested in, have been interested in for a long time is the contemplative path. What I'm not interested in is Lord, is Master, is pleasing, is obedience. Bullshit crap from my childhood. This is the god of my childhood and I'm not interested in that god. Lords and masters are MEN. Pleasing and obedient are what little girls are trained to be; what little girls and women care crippled by and punished for not being enough of, for being too much. Also, at least for now, I won't be bowing. I am not religious, I am not Christian, I am not a Catholic. I don't need to bow to show my love. 

Thank you, Beloved. I now know something about what you are not. And what I am not. 

Pluto transiting the 9th house wants every nook and cranny explored; wants anything, ANYTHING that does not work, that does not personally speak to the deepest meaning, to be burned away. I burn away lord, master, pleasing, obedience.  

From the ashes comes speaking from my heart to the Beloved; speaking my truth; speaking what resonates with me; speaking what is true for me. In "prayer," questioning, exploring, sharing ALL feelings. What I feel in my heart. Not words of my head, words are so nearly impossible here. 

My path will be ~is~ of the heart. My path will be not as a child of patriarchy, a child of christianity, but a soul filled with wonder; a heart alive with love, love for nature, our stunning earth home and all of its creation; my beloved family, life itself. The Beloved I hope. My path may include this mystic journey with Jim Finley. It may include the rosary. It will include the divine feminine, who came to me so strongly in my mediation two mornings ago. Who blessed my journey and also my body. Who blesses a full-bodied experience; who knows that the body, that the heart, that pleasure even, is sacred. Who blessed my truth telling. 

No surprise that I pulled the Diamond Heart Seed Crystal card this week. 

"The deepest chamber of the heart holds the feeling and language that communicates directly with source. It gives us the gift of unconditional love and peace.  

From this episode~

In the spiritual life, to know that you're known, and to say that to speak is to know that you are heard.

God is a presence, a presence-ing.

It's hard work being a human being. There's so much going on. And you can get the feeling that there's something missing in this, in the complexities of life, it's not easy, and there's a sense that we are lonely for ourself, that is we are lonely for the depth for ourself and for the depths of God. We get this feeling that we're skimming over the surface of the depths of our own life and this tendency is all the more  regrettable in that god's oneness with us is hidden in the depths over which we are skimming. 

A meditation practice is our commitment to any act which when we give ourselves over to it with our whole heart it takes us to the deeper place. So our practice might be tending the roses, it might be the long, slow walk to no place in particular, fidelity to a quiet hour alone at day's end, being vulnerable in the presence of that person in whose presence we are taken to the deeper place. To slow down enough to be present to the presence of G. 

Seeking You

You.
God, Goddess, Godde. Being, Beloved, Father, Mother; Great Mother. The Divine, The Sacred,
Source. Creator, Infinite, Spirit, Infinite Spirit, Divine Being, Sacred Source.
All That Is. The Mystery. The Unnameable.
The Nebulous, the Numinous,
the Ethereal. 

You, whom words cannot name, language cannot imagine. You, for whom I did not know the intensity with which I have searched. But then last winter. Last winter I glimpsed you in the dew clinging to the tender new shoots of grass. I felt you in the soft mist rising from the deep belly of the earth. I heard you in the house finch song, the cry of the hawk, the distant, terrifying keening of the coyote, the soft, otherworldly mating call of the great horned owl, her magnificent body a dark outline decorating the topmost branch of a tall, half-dead elm tree at the last of twilight, day succumbing to night. A monotone angel tree topper. 

It turns out I find you not in the kind of names I have long wrestled with. Surely not in the word God. Not in Father or Mother. The other words light me up but bring me no closer to knowing you. Or do they?

I found you in atmospheric rivers, in pounding rain, in feet slipping on muddy trails, in swollen creeks singing in the most beautiful melodies. You're in the owl's eyes that stare at me across the wooded floor filled with dying grasses and colorful poison oak. You're in the dappled light, the soft moss crawling up the tree, the whole huge limb lying flaccid on the ground next to its mother, green acorns shining in the morning light, the spotted towhee on the low branch calling day after day after day, is she calling for her home and her beloveds? 

I find you in beauty but know not how to find you in the vast suffering of the world, the bombs and brutality, the hunger, the dying Earth home, the power hunger and greed, the way generational trauma runs like hot molten lava through the DNA, dimming precious light in lives far and near, the helplessness of utter despair, my child's, my own, the world's.

This is when I cannot comprehend the creation of such a world. This, Beloved is when I need most to find you.